Loughtagalla Times

The pain of grief, loss, and overwhelming guilt. And not knowing how to talk about it.

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THERE IS A QUESTION I have not been able to properly answer since my wife Tracy passed away in August of last year. And it is the question I am asked most often.

“How are you holding up?”

Most of the time this is asked out of genuine concern. Family, friends, church members, hospital staff who have become a sort of family over the years. People who would actually be willing to take the time to listen to the answer, and who would care what I have to say.

Obviously not everyone falls into that category. There are some who don’t really want an answer, they’re simply asking as a sort of polite obligation, a social custom that must be observed before we can get down to more pressing matters. Something akin to a handshake.

But for the people who do care, and for those who have shown their love for me in a thousand ways over this past year, I often find myself wishing I could offer more than my usual response.

“I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

So why don’t I say more? Well, partly because I don’t really want to hear what people might say to me if I do. And I know that’s probably unfair to those closest to me, but I was burned early on by “advice” from individuals who had no experience with grief, yet somehow were experts in the field. Experts who traded mainly in clichés.

“It’s going to take time.”

Well, maybe. But that doesn’t change how I’m feeling now.

“You need to get out of the house.”

Okay, and then what? Go and do something without my best friend? Try and enjoy myself? Do you have any idea what you’re saying?

And another word of “wisdom” I have heard more times than I can remember: “Grief comes in waves.”

But if they knew anything about grief, they’d know it doesn’t just come in waves. It comes in tsunamis. Catastrophic tsunamis that can wipe you out without even a hint of a warninng.

And yes, I know that most people mean well, and that when it comes to bereavement, people just don’t know what to say. But if that’s the case, would it not be best to just say nothing at all? To simply offer a hug or a friendly pat on the shoulder, rather than reaching for some empty words?

Anyway, this was the kind of thing I was getting in those early days, and it always made me feel like my sorrow was being casually invalidated. And so I shut down completely, isolating myself, hiding away for fear I would hear some awful words of advice one more time. And fear of how I might respond if I did.

That’s one reason I tend to keep my answers short now. Why I don’t say how I really am.

But mostly it’s because I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I have the words to describe how I am. Certainly not in conversation, where I struggle to express myself even half coherently at the best of times. When it comes to talking, some vital transmitters in my brain refuse to show up for work.

Can I do it in writing? I don’t know. Not in any way that will do more than scratch the surface. But maybe that’s better than nothing.

So how am I holding up?

Well, to borrow from a friend who is also grieving the loss of his beloved — I’m still breathing. Keeping busy helps – another of those dreadful clichés, though it turns out there’s a grain of truth in it. And there are days when I feel I can see the faintest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Though I say that cautiously, because I felt the same thing a few months ago, only to be knocked out all of a sudden by a sucker punch of grief that hit me almost as hard as the initial loss. As I said, it comes in tsunamis.

But some days are okay. And then there are days when the weight of Tracy’s absence is crushing. When I come home and she’s not here. When I make dinner for one. When she’s missing from family occasions. When friends invite me to do things and I realise I’ll be going alone.  And even when I’m driving and she’s not there beside me, telling me what I’m doing wrong.

On those days, I feel utterly lost. And sometimes horribly guilty. Guilty that I’m still here and she’s not. That I’m going places and doing things without her, that I’m making plans that she can’t be part of, that I’m betraying her by continuing to live. That guilt can be overwhelming, and it’s been the most unexpected of all the turbulent emotions I’ve experienced.

I still cry most days, often out of the blue. A word can set me off. A picture, a memory, a song she used to love. Carolina in my Mind by James Taylor maybe, a song she used to play when she was homesick.

I still put her picture at her end of the table when I eat. And when I’m finished I wipe her end of the table too, and ask her how in God’s name did she manage to make such a mess.

I still sometimes send myself text messages from her phone, so that when I pick up my own phone later, just for a second my heart will skip when I see her name.

I don’t wash her clothes anymore but I did for a while, like I used to do when she wasn’t able for it. Just to feel like I was still taking care of her, like maybe when I finished putting the clothes away she’d be waiting in the living room for her cup of tea.

But I do still feel the strong urge to take the exit for Milford Hospice every day that I’m on the motorway in and out of Limerick, just to somehow feel close to her. It’s where she spent her last few weeks. It’s where we last had time together, where we last laughed together, where we had our last midnight snack, and where we had our last dance. It’s where I last held her hand.

And it’s where we last talked. Which is what I want to do more than anything. Just talk to her. Tell her the news. Hear what she’s been up to and get the latest scandal. Chat about the kids and the grandkids. Hear her laugh when I tell her something funny, or something stupid somebody said. Not being able to just talk to her is the hardest thing of all.

In truth, Tracy is the only one I want to talk to about everything that’s happened since she died. About the funeral, about how much she was loved, about the oceans of tears that have been shed. About how empty life is without her, how pointless it all feels now that she’s not here.

I could tell her how I really am. How I’m holding up. But in her absence, at least for now, I’ll probably be sticking to my standard response.

“I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

But I’l be happy to talk about Tracy herself — anytime, and for as long as you can listen.

About how beautiful she was, how funny she was, how she had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and the singing voice of an actual angel. How she was a force of nature who could do anything she put her mind to. And if she couldn’t do it, she’d do it anyway, and then get mad when it was done wrong. At which point I would helpfully remind her, “I told you not to do it.” And then run for my life.

When not trying to slaughter me, she was thinking of what she could do for her children, her grandchildren, her family and her friends. It’s probably said often about loved ones we’ve lost, but Tracy genuinely cared more about the happiness of the people she loved than she did her own.

She wasn’t perfect, I suppose. She didn’t like Johnny Cash, for one thing. Or Springsteen. She didn’t care much for football, or the fortunes of Liverpool FC., except to make it her business to annoy me in any way possible when I was trying to watch a game. And she didn’t like bacon and cabbage, which is of course the unforgivable sin.

But she was the strongest person I’ve ever known, and had a smile for everyone even at the worst of times. She smiled in the face of death, too. Around this time last year, her doctors at Milford told me we were looking at weeks. When I told this to Tracy later, she just smiled and said, “They don’t know me.”

And of course they didn’t know everything she’d been through — the two cancers, the brain tumour, the multiple major surgeries — or how she’d always come out the other side flying. They had no idea how stubborn she was.

Yes, she was tired at the end, finally worn down from it all. But she still had no intention of going easy.

How such a strong woman could put up with a fool like me for 20 years, I have no idea. But I will always be thankful she did.

And though we didn’t have nearly as much time as I wish we could have had, I will remember those years as the best.

[A version of this article first appeared in The Irish Times on July 15, 2025.]

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WATCH: Tracy’s memorial video. Because she was a Carolina girl, the featured song is Southern Accents by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. If you knew her, you know that accent is one of the loveliest sounds in the world.